Oh dear God my Lord and
Savior who art in heaven… please just kill me now. I was
actually waiting with some anticipation to see this
movie that I knew as ‘Immortally Yours’ because one of
my very best friends was involved in the production.
This thing was shot somewhere in Podunk Ohio which is a
few miles down the road and my buddy would give me
updates on the production and who was doing who and who
was cool and who were supreme assholes and whatnot. Thus
with all of this ‘insider’ information I couldn’t wait
to see the fruits of the labor despite the fact my buddy
implored me, begged me, fell to his knees and threatened
to fall on a sword if I saw this movie because it was
that bad. Like Clark Kent in Superman II, I heard the
voices but I didn’t listen. Nonetheless I think I’m
dissolving my friendship with this dude because though
he tried with all of his earthly might to save my
eyeballs, I don’t think he tried hard enough. It’s all
his fault.

Be forewarned that this
film has about as many characters and one of the more
overreaching plots that you’ll ever have the displeasure
of seeing. Our film opens with some lout embarrassing
his fiancée Estelle (Katherine Hawkes) while the pair is
chilling at the Opera. Fortunately this dude is quickly
dispatched by the pasty white and sickly looking Alex
Stone (Daniel Goddard) who looks like this because he's
vampire. After a quick dinner, somehow the pair fall in
love even though they didn't seem spend enough time
together for love to grow, but I guess that's why they
call it love. Alex is the head of a group of vampires
who do vampirery stuff, though his newfound love for
Estelle threatens to derail all of this vampire
goodness. Alex’s No. 2 Sebastian (Gary Daniels), in
particular is wary of this new love because it threatens
to ‘expose’ them. Now one would think that earlier on
when our vampire brood was devouring some dude in a
crowded nightclub, had a face off with the police with
flaring fangs, obnoxious tiger growls and blood dripping
from their mouths all culminating with them disappearing
like magic in a cloud of pixie dust... maybe this might
have actually been the reason they were ‘exposed’, but
no, let’s blame Alex and his desire for love.

Now things start getting a
little convoluted as Alex wants to cure his curse of
vampirism which somehow leads us to this silly mega
corporation led by one Victor Price (Eric Etabari), who
is funding Estelle’s father (Nick Jameson) to find the
secret to immortality. There is also a lame vampire
hunter named Marshall Pope (Matthias Hues) who is
cruising for Alex and his crew. In addition there are
henchman, thugs, dudes who steal vital organs and cops
dressed as clowns and so much more. Somehow all these
disparate elements and plot variances come together,
more or less… and end in outer space... Outer Freaking
Space… as Alex strives to become a real live man and at
the same time must save his one true love with the help
of his dwarf best friend (Phil Fondacaro) from the evil
Victor Price or something.

The star of this film,
Katherine Hawkes, wrote and produced ‘Kiss of the
Vampire’ and it would seem that Ms. Hawkes is a big fan
of soap operas. There was a particular scene of inspired
melodrama where Ms. Hawkes character commands Alex…
‘Kiss Me!’ and he replies dourly while looking away ‘I
can’t’, and then they repeat it like three or four more
times and if you can watch that sequence without
spitting pop through your nose, you’re a better one than
me. Also like a soap opera there were a ton of
characters and an equal amount of inane plot points but
where a soap opera has like fifteen years while coming
on for an hour every single day, ‘Kiss of the Vampire’
tried to cram all this nonsense into a mind numbingly
long 100 minutes. Mind Numbing. The director Joe
Tornatore is also credited as the ‘Supervising Editor’
and it would be in the best interest of ALL involved not
to let my man ‘supervise’ anymore. Scenes went on way
too long, actors seemed to be standing around waiting
for their cues, the camera lingered far too long on
actors doing absolutely nothing and as many plot points
that were in the movie, there were more that were
introduced that went absolutely nowhere. This is a
SPOILER but I did love the scene where the vampire
hunter set a trap for the vamps and was yelling to the
cops who were ‘helping him’ while he was getting
brutalized by another vamp, to ‘HIT THE SWITCH!’ You see
this would’ve flooded the room with some of that
artificial sunlight and thus saved him from getting
impaled with his own stake. Unfortunately no one was
standing by the switch or they forgot about the switch,
the vampire hunter gets killed but eventually our
‘helpful’ cops remember the whole switch concept but
alas… Funniest scene ever.

On the plus side the movie
did look very nice and sounded very nice which belies a
budget that I’m sure was miniscule at best, but that’s
about it for the good stuff. The acting in the flick was
a mixed bag of B-movie veterans who knew what they were
doing and some locals who really didn’t, and the special
effects were fairly poor. Then you have to get past
incessant tiger growls and the vampire actors constantly
rearing their heads back amidst these awful growls to
reveal their fangs which I’m sure is an insult to real
vampires the world over.

As one of the first movies
I’ve seen in 20-09 I hope to the heavens that I don’t
see a worse one this, and I got ties to this flick
people so it hurts me to my heart to trash ‘Kiss of the
Vampire’, but off into the Garbage Corner you go.